The archers put a pair of arrows into the pacing guard, who slumped against the house’s wall without a sound, following up their first shots with two more that slapped into the wounded man, leaving a dark smear of blood on the wall as he slid down its rough plastered surface.The tribune led his party slowly and carefully out of the trees’ shadows, through the courtyard’s open gates and quietly up to the building’s front door.
‘There may be a guard in the entrance hall.’
Arminius drew a hunting knife from his belt and pushed lightly at the door, grinning as it eased open with a gentle creak from the hinges. He slipped through the narrow gap and was inside for less than a dozen heartbeats before he reappeared, shaking his head.
‘No guards.’
They followed him through the half-open door, both Hamians nocking arrows to their bowstrings and moving to either side of the wide hall with the weapons ready to shoot. Scaurus paused for a moment to get his bearings, listening to the sleeping household. He gestured to the other men, sending Arminius forward with a pointed finger at the door that led to Theodora’s private quarters. The German vanished inside for a moment and then reappeared, beckoning the others to join him. In the darkness of the dining room her erotic murals took on a sinister quality, half-visible couplings that made the Hamians’ eyes widen whilst Arminius wrinkled his nose and ignored them, cocking his head to listen.
‘You hear something?’
The German shook his head dourly in response to Scaurus’s whispered question.
‘Thought I heard a floorboard creak. I hear nothing now.’
He shrugged, and Scaurus moved slowly across the tiled floor to the door that led to Theodora’s bedroom. Putting a finger to his lips he lifted the latch with delicate care, stepping round the half-open door to find the bed chamber bathed in moonlight from a high window. The woman was asleep on her bed beneath a sheet, and the tribune smiled gently as he stepped silently to her side, kneeling alongside her and reaching forward to put a hand over her mouth.
She started under the touch, her eyes wide with the shock of his presence, and for a moment she made to struggle. Scaurus shook his head, leaning close to whisper in her ear.
‘You’re safe now, madam, we’ve come to take you out of here. Can I remove my hand without you making any noise?’
Still startled, she nodded mutely, and the tribune removed his hand with an encouraging smile.
‘There, that’s better. Are Felix and Lartius imprisoned here?’
Theodora shook her head, her whispered reply confirming Scaurus’s expectations.
‘That monster Gerwulf had them both killed yesterday, as a lesson for their workers.’
Scaurus shook his head grimly.
‘Much as I expected, sadly for them. In that case, I think our best course would be for you to put some clothes on and accompany us to safety. It’s all about to get rather noisy and dangerous round here.’
‘What do you mean?’
He smiled again, shaking his head and gesturing to her wardrobe.
‘We’ve no time for a long story now — let’s just say that the arrival of a full legion in the valley tonight is going to put the cat among the pigeons, shall we?’
Cattanius led the larger of the two parties down the hill to the west, heading for the lights of the miners’ camp. Reaching the road the soldiers flattened themselves to the ground at Marcus’s silent command, waiting for him to order them across the pale ribbon. Raising his body off the ground in readiness to jump to his feet and make the dash, the Roman stiffened as he heard the sound of boots approaching from the direction of the camps further down the valley. He shuffled backwards on his elbows and knees, whispering a command to the men behind him.
‘Get back into the shadows!’
Following his example the raiders swiftly backed away from the road and into the cover of a patch of scrub, throwing themselves to the ground and pulling their cloaks over their helmeted heads. Peering through a gap between cloak and ground, Marcus saw a party of soldiers march into view, and at their heart he was dismayed to see Gerwulf himself. Qadir had slipped into the shadow of a tree trunk, raising his bow with a hunting arrow nocked and ready to fly, but after a moment he lowered the weapon.
‘There are too many of them for us to deal with. And I have no clear shot with all those men packed around him.’
Marcus nodded slowly at the Hamian’s muttered comment.Waiting until the Germans were out of sight before turning back to his comrades, he whispered a quiet instruction.
‘They must be heading for the woman’s villa. We can only hope that the tribune has already found her and headed back to the mine, and in any case it’s nearly time for the show to begin. We stay here, and when Gerwulf comes galloping back down the hill from Theodora’s villa we’ll make our move.’
Silus and his remaining horsemen had followed their instructions to the letter since parting company from the raiders that afternoon, making a careful approach to the Ravenstone’s lower reaches along forest game paths in order to avoid the risk of being spotted by Gerwulf’s scouts. They waited in the trees that lined the road down through the valley’s lower section until Silus judged the right time to be upon them, then crept out across the open ground in silence, labouring under their heavy burdens until they reached the road that ran up the valley’s floor. Dividing his twenty men equally to either side of the road’s cobbled ribbon with whispered instructions, the decurion led both parties down the track away from the mine, telling off a pair of them with every count of sixty paces and hissing the same command.
‘One torch for every three steps!’
Once halted, each man quickly untied his bundle of twenty torches and set about pushing their sharpened ends deeply enough into the turf’s soft soil for the brands to stand upright without support. Once he had a six-hundred-pace-long double line of torches established along the road’s verges, Silus hurried back to the front of the line, gathering his men about him as he climbed the slope and shooting another glance at the sky. The lowest star in the constellation of Orion was only fractionally clear of the horizon, and the decurion nodded decisively.
‘Close enough. Never mind his knee touching the mountains, he’ll have a tree up his arse by the time we get them all lit if we don’t get on with it. Get your cloaks up.’
The cavalrymen did as he instructed, each of them raising his cloak to overlap with that of the man next to him to form a thick barrier of the dark, heavy wool between the decurion and the distant sentries standing guard on the earth wall. Silus took out flint and iron, quickly setting fire to a pile of tinder that he had gathered that afternoon. He put his own torch into the small blaze, waiting as the stave’s pitch-soaked head took fire, still hopefully invisible to the Germans.
‘Right my lads, it’s time to find out if the tribune’s plan is going to work. Drop your cloaks and get those torches lit!’
Scaurus led the small party back into the villa’s entrance hall, pausing at the door to be sure that everyone was ready. Arminius nodded to him from the small group’s rear, and the tribune opened the door as slowly as he could, smiling as the hinges groaned almost inaudibly. He stepped out into the darkness, opening his eyes wide to help them to adapt to the lack of illumination, then stepped cautiously forward with the Hamians following him and Theodora huddled into her cloak between them. Halfway across the villa’s courtyard he heard a minute sound, the scrape of booted feet on stone, and in the time it took him to realise that the noise had come from in front of him rather than from the party following him it was already too late to do anything. A familiar voice was raised in a shout of command, and the raiders froze as men emerged from the shadows around them, more men than the four of them could hope to fight off. The villa’s door flew open behind them, and Arminius spun to find himself facing three swords as the guards spread out behind the party to add their threat to that arraigned before them. As the circle of blades closed about them a voice spoke from the darkness.
Scaurus bent and placed his weapon on the courtyard’s flagstones, hearing the sounds of blades being lowered to the stones behind him. Gerwulf’s men moved in with their blades held ready to kill, and the tribune watched with the point of a soldier’s sword inches from his face as the prefect stepped forward and sized up the party’s strength with a triumphant smirk.
‘So, what have we here? The bold tribune, come to rescue his lover, his faithful bodyguard, two rather disposable-looking soldiers, and my own dear girl.’
Theodora walked out of the small group, the Germans lifting their blades to allow her to pass, and she put an affectionate arm around Gerwulf’s waist, kissing him on the cheek.
‘Well done my love. I was actually afraid that they were going to make off with me, but you seem to have arrived just in time.’
‘Indeed.’ The prefect looked at Scaurus and his men with a calculating expression for a moment, then flicked a hand at the watch officer commanding his escort. ‘I’ll keep the officer and his servant; you can kill the other two.’
‘Yes, my lord Wolf!’
The Hamians were dragged away to the other side of the courtyard by a pair of men apiece, their scuffles of resistance swiftly silenced by the watch officer’s stabbing sword blows. Scaurus stared at Gerwulf with a sad expression, shaking his head in disgust.
‘You can’t help yourself, can you, Gerwulf? That urge to see men die never gets any weaker, does it?’
The German laughed in his face.
‘In life Scaurus, as you well know, there are killers and there are victims. And I have no intention of becoming the latter through demonstrating any weakness of the kind that has brought you here to me. We’ll go back into the villa now, shall we, and get a fire burning? I’m curious to see just how quickly you feel like telling me how you ever expected to evict me from this tidy little fortress you built for me, once you’ve felt the kiss of red-hot iron a few times.’
Theodora waved a hand dismissively.
‘There’s no need to torture him, he’s already told me what’s happening. Apparently there’s a legion marching on the valley, and it will arrive tonight.’
Gerwulf shook his head with a bark of derision.
‘Bullshit! Legions don’t march in the dark, and even if such an attack was possible there’s no way that infantry could have got here from Porolissum that quickly. He was feeding you false information’ — a thoughtful tone entered the German’s voice — ‘which makes me wonder just how much the tribune here knew about our relationship before now? Perhaps we’ll do without the hot iron and get straight to the point here and now, with nothing more sophisticated than the point of my dagger for an incentive to talk.’
He slid the weapon from its sheath and stepped forward, raising the knife’s point to Scaurus’s eye. The Roman ignored the imminent threat, shaking his head at Gerwulf once more with a pitying note in his voice.
‘You’ve miscalculated, Gerwulf. The Sarmatae came to battle before we even reached the border, and they got their barbarian arses kicked in for their trouble. It seems some savages just can’t be educated, doesn’t it? We were already marching south as the advance guard for Clodius Albinus and his legion’s return to Apulum when the news of this rather spectacular piece of larceny arrived, and the legatus has had his men at the double pace ever since. He’s given orders for you to be taken alive at all costs, since he wants to make an example of you that won’t be forgotten for a while. Your future holds nothing more than torture and protracted death, and Theodora’s too, I’d imagine. You’re about to find out what happens when you piss off a Roman aristocrat by biting the hand that’s been feeding you.’
The German shook his head again with a mocking smile on his face.
‘It’s just not quite ringing true I’m afraid. Nice try, Rutilius Scaurus, but I think we’ll just get on with finding out the truth, shall we?’ He raised the knife, putting the point against Scaurus’s lower eyelid. ‘This should be a novel experience for you, using one eye to look into the other.’
A centurion burst into the courtyard panting for breath, gasping out his message as the prefect spun to face him with any thought of torture momentarily forgotten.
‘Lord Wolf! There are lights on the road in the valley!’
Gerwulf strode across to him.
‘What lights? What are you talking about?’
Still gasping for air, the officer pointed back down the road to the wall as he panted out his news.
‘Centurion Hadro sent me to find you, sir. We have torches coming up the road, hundreds of them. He said to tell you it looks like a cohort on the march!’
The German turned away from him, putting his face so close to Scaurus that the Roman could smell the spiced meat on his breath.
‘What kind of fucking trick is this?’
The tribune shrugged.
‘I did try to tell you. That’s my lads closing the front door as the advance guard for the Thirteenth Gemina. Legatus Albinus resolved that we should all march through the night by torchlight, so by morning I expect you’ll be knee-deep in legionaries, and not just in front of the wall either. He’ll seal this place up tighter than an Egyptian tomb and wait until you surrender for lack of food. Of course, the miners will starve to death before it gets to that point, but the legatus doesn’t really care very much about those sorts of incidentals. As we used to say when I served under him in the German Wars, there’s hard, there’s downright ruthless, and then there’s Decimus Clodius Albinus.’
For a moment he was sure that his captor was going to slam the dagger still held in one hand into his belly, but the German turned away and dropped the weapon back into its sheath.
‘You four, take these two prisoners back into the villa and keep a close eye on them. I’ll be back when we know the truth of this apparent attack. The rest of you come with me!’
Marcus and the men huddled in the grass around him had watched in silence as the star that formed Orion’s knee nudged down onto the horizon and disappeared, and the Roman had fingered his amulet and muttered a prayer to Mithras that Silus had managed to achieve his part of the plan as required. After a short while a centurion had run up the hill towards the villa, gasping for breath as he’d struggled against the weight of his armour. In the valley below them they could hear the sounds of soldiers being called to arms, the shouts and curses of their officers and the clatter of equipment. Dubnus had stared at the runner’s back, muttering what they were all thinking.
‘It seems as if Silus has managed to get their attention.’
Marcus’s whispered reply had been a low growl.
‘Indeed. All we need now is for Gerwulf to put his head into the noose.’
The sound of boots on the road that reached them a moment later made the raiding party tense in anticipation, every man straining his eyes up the road into the town. A body of men came running down the hill from the villa, Gerwulf once again in their midst, and Qadir raised his bow in the shadow of the tree once more, only to lower it with a disgusted shake of his head as the pack of men raced past them and on down the valley.
‘There were nineteen of them before, including Gerwulf, but now there are four less. Either our tribune fought and died, but managed to kill four men, or those soldiers have been left behind to guard captives.’
Marcus pulled a face at Qadir’s conclusion.
‘How many men would your two archers have taken down before they were killed, do you think?’
The answer was immediate.
‘Two apiece. Possibly three if they were fortunate.’
‘Exactly.
And the tribune and Arminius would have done at least as well. There are too many men left standing for there to have been a fight, and none of them are wounded, or even blooded. I think they’ve been captured.’ He looked at his friend with a grimace of frustration. ‘Mithras, but I’m tempted to kick the doors on that place and pull him out now, but his orders were very clear. Follow me.’
They stood, and Marcus, Dubnus and Martos put on the iron caps they had taken from the men at the mine’s entrance, hefting their captured shields. Marcus led them down the road at a purposeful trot in the wake of Gerwulf’s men, whose hobnails could still be heard clattering down the road towards the wall in the darkness ahead of them. Rounding a corner they came into sight of the Raven Head mine’s camp, now visibly different with the erection of a high palisade around the barracks buildings. A quartet of soldiers was standing guard on the gate, and another four stood on the palisade above them with bows, the latter staring to the west from their elevated position at the lights in the valley beyond the wall. Marcus quickened his pace, running towards the guards with his swords still sheathed and trusting that the three men’s disguises would hold for long enough.
‘So, here we are again?’
Theodora shot a caustic look across the villa’s dining room at Scaurus as he settled back into his chair and ignored the two soldiers whose swords waited only inches from his back, shaking her head at him with a disdainful expression.
‘Don’t go getting any ideas, Tribune. Our couplings were purely professional. You’re really not my type.’
He smiled up at her, patting his crotch.
‘Nor you mine, if truth be told. I’ve never really been all that attracted to maneaters, although I can only salute your abilities beneath the sheets. You were good enough value in bed, but I think you’d soon get a little monotonous as a life companion.’ He returned her cold stare with an unruffled shrug. ‘I’m sorry Theodora, but you must realise that your apparent nymphomania makes you somewhat more demanding than most men could manage.’ He laughed at her piqued expression. ‘And do please spare me the indignant glare, madam, because we both know that your main value to your partnership with your brother is your skill as a seductress, don’t we?’
The Wolf's gold e-5 Page 37